Ding dong!
Let's not worry ourselves with the 50% Community Exp buff which is there as a crutch to get people playing again and hitting level 60 before Reaper drops, power levelling/boosting with a well geared friend is incredibly quick and can easily get a level 1 hero to 60 within an hour of creation if you're dedicated enough for the grind, add maybe another hour max without the 50% extra.
THE OFFICIAL OVERVIEW
FULL PATCH NOTES
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/12671560#blog
I won't go into much detail about all of the changes, mainly because that's boring and long winded and the changes are there readily available for all to see if they be so inclined.
However, if you're like me and haven't played since the early days/weeks (maybe a few months) after launch then there are immediately some changes that will scream in your face.
THE RUNDOWN
First off is the difficulty level. Where have Nightmare/Hell/Inferno gone?! And, if you were around at patch 1.0.5 and later, where has my Monster Power gone?!
Well, all the new difficulty levels you now see are rather boring and generic in terms of their description! Everyone has seen Hard/Expert/Master with Torment being the exception. These are the new equivalent to Monster Power and not the old Nightmare/Hell/Inferno which required you to beat the previous difficulty level before advancing.
This is because the new 'Dynamic Difficulty' levels monsters along with your character level! No more under-levelled character and no more smashing a level 20 something Diablo for the fun of it (aww darn it).
All in all a good change which means you can't really get stuck at any point in the story and need to grind out some previous content before you can advance, this only comes into effect once you start hitting the higher difficulties of Torment.
The smooth transitions are helped by the new loot system, creatively tagged 'Loot 2.0'. Simply put, this is a complete revamp of loot and how the items have stats distributed.
Best part here will be the new complete lack of multi-primary statted items.
Intelligence, Strength and Dexterity are now exclusive from one another, say bye to your awesomely intelligent beard stroking Barbarians! Vitality is counted as a Primary stat itself although it can be rolled in with the other Primaries.
All stats that directly affect your hero's ability to kill monsters or survive a heavy beating are counted as Primary, and those with minor effects (besides possibly 'Thorns' and 'Life after Kill') are classed as Secondary.
Primary Stats include: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Vitality, Critical Hit Damage, Critical Hit Chance, Attack Speed, Life per Second, Armor, +% Life, Bonus Damage to Elites, Bleed Damage, All Resistance, Sockets, Splash Damage, Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, +% damage to Physical/Elemental damage skills, and specific Class Skill Bonuses.
Secondary Stats include: Gold Find, Thorns, Bonus Experience per Monster Kill, Chance for (Fear, Stun, Blind, Freeze, Chill, Slow, Immobilize and Knockback), Ignore Durability Loss, Bonus Healing to Health Globes and Potions, Bonus Pickup Radius, Single Resist, Life After Kill, and Level Requirement Reduction.
There is a current maximum of 4 Primary Stats and 2 Secondary although when crafting the tooltips always just simply state 6 Magical Properties, which is just lazy from Blizzard.
This is mostly to curb the incredible power that some items with the best stat distributions had by limiting the ability to have all 6 properties directly increase the power of the hero equipping it. No more crazy Socketed, Int/Str/Dex, Crit Chance, Crit Damage, Attack Speed, Life on Hit items which cannot be beaten in terms of stat efficiency and power. This is why many older advanced players will not be replacing their 'Legacy' gear for some time even into RoS.
Items in general make more sense now and won't have any glaring stat wastage although not as powerful compared to older, one in ten million, perfectly rolled items.
Paragon (introduced in Patch 1.0.4) has also been completely revamped into the once more creatively dubbed, Paragon 2.0!
So the Paragon levels you acquire after reaching Max Level on your characters are now shared across all your characters, even if they themselves aren't at max level though Paragon for Hardcore and Normal Paragon levels are still separate.
Each level, a Paragon point is earned for one of four categories: Core, Offence, Defence, and Utility. The point is assigned to each category cyclically so Paragon 1 earns a point towards the Core set, Paragon 2 for Offence, 3 for Defence, 4 for Utility and back to Core for Paragon 5.
These points allow you to tweak your character to personal likings and customise for different scenarios as the points are readily reset for re-distribution.
Those are the biggest obvious changes there are and much of the rest of the notes are just basic number changes to skills and a few tweaks to how some skill runes work, some boss fight changes and new mob affixes.
Now for some of the more minor changes but still affecting the game substantially.
First off, my favourite for strange reason... It's the Waypoint Map!
Most likely in preparation for the upcoming Adventure Mode allowing you to see the map of your current act rather than just a menu of place names. Also highlights which waypoint is closest to your current active quest. Of course you still have to find the waypoint before you're able to travel to it.
Pools of Reflection have been added which are similar to Healing Wells, only golden and grant 25% Bonus Experience up to a cap which is lost on death and stacks up to 10 times. Yay for even more power levelling opportunities and making Paragon levelling faster.
Nephalem Glory are similar to Healing Globes, only golden (Gold is the new Red) and grant a short buff which procs GOLDEN LIGHTNING to help you murder demon spawn much faster and encourage you to find more to kill faster.
Resurrecting has had options added to it. You may choose to either resurrect at your body (max 3 times in a row and not in boss fights), in town, or at the last checkpoint you encountered. This makes it easier to continue your crusade a little more smoothly even if you run into a rough patch along the way.
On the Character Panel you can now see Toughness and Healing, as well as good old Damage.
This makes inspecting gear and determining if it's an upgrade or not for your character much easier, though you still have to factor in % modifiers to Physical/Elemental Damage yourself and nothing beats testing out your new gear by going out and smashing some demons.
As you can see, there are a lot of Quality of Life changes which make the game all in all a lot smoother and a little less confusing to progress through but still a massive challenge to min/max your characters.
With regards to classes and their kits, with all the number tweaks and changes, there hasn't quite been enough time to delve deeply into them for finding any ultimate build but from current experiences, the balancing has worked magic.
Messing around with any of the spells and passives even outside of Elective Mode prove them to be effective and well defined. No one skill out does everything else for all situations and experimenting with everything to make it work for your task at hand is part of the fun!
The balance has certainly made Primary skills much more important and not left to the wayside, though this is also helped by the changes to Resource generation ranging from items to passive regeneration.
All in all you can now use what is fun for you for most situations whilst having the freedom to change skills to switch up the playstyle without having to worry all too much.
With the drop of Patch 2.0, Diablo 3 feels refreshingly fun, smooth and fast enough to have a little half hour incursion into Sanctuary and deep enough for a day long siege of the Pandemonium Fortress.
Whether new or returning player, this is definitely a step up for Diablo which will definitely sate your Action RPG thirst.
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